


Always By Your Side

by tocasia



Series: Our Shining Past [41]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: #sailthecosmos, AU, Angels, Dark, Death, Dramatic Rescue, Gen, I reject your reality and substitute my own, Sephiroth and Zack friendship, Stream of Consciousness, Violence, dreams or maybe not, possibly disturbing, the war in Wutai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tocasia/pseuds/tocasia
Summary: So coldI am always by your side.Things don't look so good, but....(56. everything for you) for Seph&Zack Friendship 100 Themes





	Always By Your Side

He's fighting for his life, paying attention to each opponent in front of him and covering the SOLDIERS to either side, looking out for them as best he can. It's crazy, and chaotic, and they hope their training holds together in the face of the chaos longer than the enemy's does.

Shouts, calls for medics. Men are turned into meat; bodies go flying. Keep moving. Grab the weapons of the fallen.

...and then he's down.

If any of his squad survive, someone will ask them, "Who's your CO?" and they'll say, "Captain Fair, but he's dead sir." Because he isn't going to.... _maybe_ if he was a First, but Seconds died from things like this. He's seen it.

Wutai has all the different colors of mud. Zack's got his eyes open but there's no point. He listens to an echo of his heartbeat; doesn't know if it's fast or slow or what that would mean. 

The gunshots aren't nearby anymore. Somewhere there is pain; he's trying not to be there.

It is cold. Cold like metal on skin, pleasantly cool, but also sharp, even without an edge.

_Don't move_.

Heh. That's an easy order to follow right now and Zack wonders if he can say so... but then he's overtaken by a sudden, forced detachment, shoved aside, outside. Rage and promise ignite around him. Mental pressure condenses to wrath he's only barely shielded from. It descends to strike....

It's like layers of reality unfurl. Layers belonging to someone. Wings.

And he can't see! It won't let him see what it's doing. Terror rises, he resists. He is smothered by reassurance he doesn't trust. The ...presence... in his thoughts, ever lenient, don't you think so? grants his wish, clarity as a reward for his wisdom. Zack thinks it's probably smiling.

He's still lying in the mud; injuries no less severe. Everything's blurry until.... With eyes shut for him, he's witness to a million variations on the same instant. His attackers stand in subtly different positions on the battlefield. Thousands of faces flicker, the features change, and reload different weapons, targets uncertain, sometimes in the snow, but isn't it spring? They are slain by flashes of silver in hazy darkness, their shadows upon history gracefully erased. _Reclaimed_. 

Zack feels unbidden pity for the enemy, helpless before that power. Awe. Fear more than elation at being saved.

In his head there is agreement, pleased and merciless. _Their deaths are a gift to you._ It sings with love the way the sword does; he knows it is a sword that kills them, in purposeful pain. It cuts not all the way through, and then twists; it allows screams not necessary for defeat, so they may join those pulsing in Mako, the ones Zack has struggled to ignore since making SOLDIER. His compassion and horror are denied, replaced with the foreign pleasure that, as if in apology for its intensity, quickly recedes and tries to soothe without compelling.

He is utterly safe, protected where there cannot be doubt.

Invisible fire in the air is fanned by that impossible idea of infinite wings, searing with heat distortion and Mako reflections and insanity. Then it is over, leaving behind a righteous satisfaction _definitely_ not his own that he hopes never to remember, and the silence of perfect victory.

Somehow, ineffably, Zack _knows_ , beyond simple relief or a wavering 'I think I might be okay after all', that he will not die here... and that it is truth, because everywhere it isn't true no longer exists.

The only explanation is the voice, exhausted, that in dark contentment recalls ancient grief to say, "I didn't want to watch you die again."

* * *

He wakes up in a makeshift infirmary drugged out of his mind. No one's really acting surprised that he's awake and nothing is strange except the almost-memory. There's stories about stuff like this, about when you nearly die and you hallucinate things, and that must be what happened to him, cause he's looking at his squad, thank Gaea for phoenix downs!, and there's no understanding in their eyes. Hey, it makes _some_ sense though! He's not sure of any higher authority, so why _shouldn't_ his angel have General Sephiroth's voice?

They don't believe his story. "The General is far away on another front," they say, but do not otherwise correct him.


End file.
